Yesterday I wrote about ‘letting go’. Today a good follow up will be some practical applications involving other parts of letting go.
It’s easy saying the cheater needs to let go of the lover. The harder parts are for the betrayed letting go of the accusations about the affair.
A reader wrote to me “My husband cheated on me I can’t stop throwing it in his face. We fuss a lot.”
When readers make statements like that, without making their concern clear, it makes answers hard. She wanted direction without making it clear what she wanted an direction on.
Continuing the pattern of throwing the affair in the cheater’s face is problematic. At that point, your message isn’t getting through.
When what you’re doing isn’t working, it’s time to do it differently. Continually holding onto the hurt and throwing it in your spouse’s face is a sure way of keeping conflict going.
When you keep the conflict going, I wonder what the payoff is and what you’re really after. Continually keeping it in their face only keeps the fight going. It doesn’t make them want to get close to you or have them listen to you.
Continually bringing it up the affair comes across as fault-finding nagging and ends up pushing them away. Throwing it in their face pushes them away. Doing it again and again also encourages them to ignore the person bringing it up.
The human mind blocks out overly repetitive messages. Such messages are labeled as ‘noise’ and disregarded.
I wrote her back “ the more you throw things in his face, the less he will listen to what you are saying. Men tend to tune out messages that are repeated over and over.
If you want him to listen, limit what you say and soften how you say it. This forces them to ‘tune in’ and listen, rather than tune out.”
She dismissed my response as being bad. It’s counter-intuitive to some.
Her response told me that I hadn’t identified her real issue. Being unable to stop throwing the affair in his face wasn’t what her main concern was.
She had another agenda behind bringing up the affair. When you can’t let go of an unhealthy behavior, there’s a reason for it.
If you can’t stop bringing up the affair, you have other concerns as well.
When your message isn’t clear, it makes communication with your spouse difficult at best. This is why I have included videos on improving communication in the resources you have access to in the Restored Lifestyle support community site. When you can’t be clear with your spouse, you’re not going to be able to resolve the issues.
The issues in your marriage can only be resolved to the degree you and your spouse have clarity in your communication.
Best Regards,
Jeff
